Session Outline

The Advanced Personal Tuition Forum (APTF) at Birmingham City University offers systematic interventions to improve student engagement, success and retention through enhanced professional development for personal tutors. This interactive workshop will enable colleagues to share ideas and experiences about personal tuition, as well as reflecting on the key themes incorporated into the APTF programme including understanding and expectations of tutees and enhanced techniques to build student agency, a sense of identity and self-efficacy.

This workshop aligns most closely with the conference’s sub-themes of student-centred transformation and community and draws on Carol Dweck’s famous phrase about students ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’, as students learn what HE is about and how to be successful within it. In the UK responsibility for much of this work falls on students’ personal tutors. Ironically though, in much of the sector Dweck’s observations do not appear to have been applied to the development needs of the academic staff involved in personal tuition. While personal tuition is a commonly used term in UK HEIs, most academics receive very little support in developing their capabilities as personal tutors and the term can mean very different things to different people. For students such a laissez-faire approach to the staff development of their tutors is a high-risk strategy that can result in an unacceptably variable experience for them. Such an approach does little for staff self-confidence or institutional esteem in the activity of personal tuition either.

This workshop will create a pop-up community of practice in which colleagues can share ideas and experiences about student-centred transformation and EDI. Participants will have opportunities to reflect and comment on the key themes incorporated into the APTF programme in relation to their understanding and expectations of their tutees, as well as enhanced techniques to build student agency, a sense of identity and self-efficacy.

Session outline

1. Introduction to the BCU context and practice to clarify the definition of personal tuition being discussed. (5 mins)
2. Small group discussion task 1. Participants to consider and debate key propositions relating to the academic / professional dimensions to personal tuition (15 mins):
   • Developing academic skills for success
   • Psychometric profiling for professional success
   • Feedback to whole group
   • Summary: The boundaries of personal tuition (5 mins)
3. Small group discussion task 2. Participants to consider and debate key propositions relating to student-centred transformation in diverse settings (15 mins):
   • Equality, diversity and inclusion
   • Emotional intelligence v customer service
   • Mentally healthy conversations and wellbeing
   • Feedback to whole group
4. Final plenary (5 mins)